There is even a greater indisposition in our day, than in the time of Boyle, to admit the value and to stimulate the discovery of specifics. Nor is this wonderful; for specifics obstinately refuse to range themselves under any rational hypothesis. They exert a peculiar, inscrutable action upon certain organs when in certain conditions, and more than this nobody can say of them. And yet, notwithstanding their philosophical aversion to them, the practical sagacity of our colleagues, with which they keep their philosophy strangely at variance, leads them to seize eagerly upon specifics whenever these are presented to their notice. Witness the avidity with which they have availed themselves of Iodine, Ergot, Cod Liver Oil, the Hypophosphites, Iron, Veratrum viride, as well as of Nickel and Oxalate of Verium which the Houdin of orthodox medicine has lately introduced to them. Nay, people do say that our learned friends of the Old School make frequent use, “upon the sly,” of Aconite as a specific in fever, and of Nux vomica and of Pulsatilla as specifics in gastrodynia and dysmenorrhoea, etc., etc., remedies of the specific properties of which their only knowledges is derived from the labors of Hahnemann.
It is true, they undertake to give a “rational” theory of the action of these specific remedies, but with as little success as Cullen met with when he attempted to explain the febrifuge action of Perucian bark. It is all comprised in the doggerel explication that Moliere gives of the hypnotic effects of opium.
“Domandutur causam et rationem quare
Opium facit dormire,
A quoi est in eo
Virtus dormitiva,
Cujus est nature
Sensus assouprie.”
Now, as in the days of Hahnemann, there is an antagonism between the Homoeopathists and the Old School. The former hold out to the latter what they believe to be that method which has ever been a desideratum in medicine, The latter refuse even to examine it, and expel the Homoeopathists from all associations over which they hold control. We cannot unite with them in any associated labors without ignoring and disavowing what we believe to be the true theory and practice of the all-important part of medical science-the science of therapeutics. They will not unite with us in associated labors for the development of this science.
Had Hahnemann done nothing more than devise a method of discovering and using specifics in the gross and wholesale sense in which the term was and is understood and used by the Old School of medicine, he would still have been entitled to the gratitude of mankind. He did far more.
He perceived that, in the dominant school, a specific was set apart as adapted to any individual member, indiscriminately, of a large nosological group ( of diseases); that bark, for example, was held to be the specific for malarious fevers in general, and that no account was taken of individual deviations within the limits of this group. Whereas, in point of fact, he perceived what is well known within the profession and without it, that although bark is really the specific for many, indeed for the majority of malarious fevers, it is not so for all’ since many cases cannot be cured or even improved by its use.
Now, this wholesale way of regarding diseases, in groups, was the logical and inevitable consequence of the Old School theories of diseases and of the method of cure. When Galen propounded the doctrine that all diseases depend upon one of four, conditions, heat, cold, dryness, moisture, it was an inevitable consequence that he should disregard every phenomenon presented by his patients, except such as served to indicate that the case belonged to one of the above categories, and that he should but four classes of remedial agents appropriate to these categories.
And when, in our day, physicians assume to ascribe diseases to certain pathologico-anatomical states as their essential causes, it is manifest that whatever varieties the case of each one of a dozen patients may present, must be disregarded, provided the pathologico-anatomical condition be the same in all, for they are group on the basis of this condition, and the indication for the cure is drawn from the existence of this condition, and must necessarily be the same for all.
Now, just as any spot upon the surface of the globe may be approached by an almost infinite number of roads, and yet, when the traveler has reached the spot, there shall be nothing in the mere fact of his presence there to indicate with certainly the road by which he has come thither, so the same pathologico- anatomical result may issue from the most multifarious pathological processes, which processes, however, leave no sign in the result. If, then, the mode of treatment be based on the result, it can take no account of this variety in the processes.
A wholesale generalization, then, of diseases and of remedies is inevitable from the philosophy of the “Rational” method.
The common experience of the community teaches men that diseases to which the same name is given may present in different persons an entirely different aspect. John Doe and Richard Roe both have rheumatism, but their symptoms and whole condition are so entirely different that no one would have imagined them to have the same diseases, if the doctor had not said so. The pathologico- anatomical condition, however, is the same in both (viz., the altered condition of the blood), and consequently the rational indications for the cure are identical in the two cases. If the doctor be true to the philosophy of his method, he treats them alike, notwithstanding the difference in their symptoms and apparent condition. But I call your attention to the fact which is familiar to every one, that every sagacious and longheaded physician of the Old School pays the less regard to the rules of his art the more experience he acquires at the bedside.
In treating diseases he “feels his way,” as the saying is; he relies on his “practical tact and experience,” and often deviates widely from the rules of practice as they are deduced in the books from the theory of the art; he trusts less and less implicity to a pathologico-anatomical basis of treatment, and more and more to “general indications,” by which he means the sum of the symptoms of each individual case. In truth, experience has taught him the fallacy of the science of therapeutics, as founded on the “Rational” basis.
Now, if this were a true science, would not experience rather confirm the practitioners’s faith in it, and add to his skill in applying it?
When on the other hand we cast aside all endeavors to base a method of treatment upon a theory of disease; when we give over all attempts to discover the inscrutable, essential nature and cause of diseases, and confine our observations to the phenomena of morbid action, whether these be material or functional, then we can take into account the pathological processes as well as the pathologico-anatomical result. We are then in condition to give due weight to the peculiarities of each individual case of disease, to study it, as under other circumstances groups are studied, and to give due attention to the modifying idiosyncrasies of the individual.
Hence, under our method alone is an absolute individualization of disease possible. Such a method of studying disease, however, would be barren under the Old School method of treatment, even with specific. For the properties of specifics were known to the Old School only with reference to large and ill- defined groups of diseases. By us, on the other hand, specifics are studied in the effects which they produce upon the healthy subject, precisely as diseases are studied in the effects which morbific causes produce upon the sick. The same strict individualization, then, is practicable with regard to specifics that we seen to be necessary in the study of diseases. It is not only practicable- it is fruitful of the richest returns.
The case, therefore, is not half stated when we say that Hahnemann discovered the method of specifics. He taught us how to discover and apply, and showed us the necessity of applying, an individual specific to each individual case of disease, as studied in the totality of its phenomena and without regard to the nosological group to which, for purposes of classification, the case might be assignable.
As a necessary consequence of this individualization, Hahnemann taught the value of subjective symptoms. By these, we mean those symptoms of which the physician becomes congizant through the sensibilities of the patient. Among them are all the varieties of pains and abnormal sensations which accompany disease. These symptoms were previously disregarded and are still considered as of no value by the “rational” or “physiological” school of medicine. Thus, Professor Bock, of Leipzic, in his work on Diagnosis (1853), says: “Only the objective symptoms-of which the practitioner derives a knowledge by the use of his own five senses, by sight, touch, hearing, mensuration, percussion, and by miscroscopic and chemical examinations-are of any value to the physician. The subjective symptoms are in the highest degree uncertain and treacherous.” In other words, the disease is to be studied in all cases just as the phenomena of an inanimate plant or mineral are studied; the case of an intelligent and self- possessed patient, just as that of a patient whose intelligence is dormant under the cloud of a typhoid fever!
Dr. Dunham graduated from Columbia University with Honours in 1847. In 1850 he received M.D. degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York. While in Dublin, he received a dissecting wound that nearly killed him, but with the aid of homoeopathy he cured himself with Lachesis. He visited various homoeopathic hospitals in Europe and then went to Munster where he stayed with Dr. Boenninghausen and studied the methods of that great master. His works include 'Lectures on Materia Medica' and 'Homoeopathy - Science of Therapeutics'.